February release notes

UPDATE: This update can now be manually installed from the App Store or Google Play store. Please note however that it may take up to 24 hours for this update to appear for you.

ALSO, not all of these changes will be live in game until 2/10/2016 when a forced update will put all players on the same version of the game, example being character changes.
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Greetings,

Here is the moment you have all been waiting for, the very large list for everything we're doing in the next major update! Please note that we are aiming to have this update live and ready to go next week, but there is always that chance it may slip a few days.

DISCLAIMER: please be aware that anywhere in the notes where it says "now" refers to when this update is actually live.

What’s New

New Events System

A key feature in this update is a brand new Events system. This system replaces the old Key Card Events, and will enable our designers to craft a wide variety of Event types, structures, and themes.

To provide interesting and challenging scenarios, the new system can restrict the type, number, category, and rarity of units eligible for a given Event.

Events can allow limitless attempts, a limited number of attempts, or be non-repeatable.

Most Events are expected to be available for a limited time. An exception are the Training Droid and Credits Events which were previously available in the Key Card system. Those two events will also be available in the new Events system, and are expected to always be available.

A limited time Event can re-appear at a later date after its time limit has expired. Players' progress will be saved from previous attempts.

As part of this change, the old Key Card collection table has been removed.

First Event – Featuring a New Character!

One of the most-frequently requested characters is now available! In this inaugural Event, players can Battle to win Shards for this character in their customized training Battles.

This Event features seven stages which must be unlocked progressively. Only Jedi units are allowed. The requirements for each Stage are also based on the star rarity of the Jedi units.

The first Battle in this Event requires five Jedi which are 1 Star or above. Completing that Battle will award Shards of the new character, and unlock Stage 2.

Stage 2 requires five Jedi which are 2 Star or above, and so on up to Stage 7 which requires five Jedi at 7 Stars to get the final Shards needed to Promote the new character to 7 Stars! Once players have completed Stage 5, they will have enough Shards to Activate the new character at 5 Stars.

This Event is planned to be available for a week, and then unavailable for a number of weeks, and then available again for a week, etc. This approach will give players multiple opportunities to progress in the Event, with time in between to prepare as needed.

This will be the only place to gain Shards of the new character. The new character is not expected to be for sale or acquirable elsewhere in the game.

New Training Bot and Credit Events

These two repeatable Events have been refactored under the new Events system.

These Events are open indefinitely and no longer require Key Cards. Players can attempt them without limit.

Energy cost per attempt has been adjusted down.

Payouts per attempt have also been adjusted down to account for the lowered Energy cost, unlimited attempts, and economy balance.

Free Energy Rewards

During 3 two hour periods of the day (12:00-14:00, 18:00-20:00, and 21:00-23:00, all in your local time) the player can collect additional bonus Energy through the Daily Activities menu.

This bonus Energy will only be available during those time windows and must be actively collected. The collection opportunity will not persist if the player comes in after the two hour window expires.

A countdown timer displays in Daily Activities to show when the next one will be available.

Leaderboard Rank Swap Adjustments

Adjustments have been made to the way Arena matchmaking works for the top 40 positions on the leaderboard.

Once players reach rank 40, the range of players they can challenge will begin to shrink.

For example, previously, players who reached rank 11 could attack the player at rank 2. Now a rank 11 player will only be able to attack a player up to rank 6.

Shard Details

When viewing possible rewards or shipments, clicking on a character Shard will display the number of Shards required to acquire or Promote that character as well as summary details on the strategic value of the character.

This will give players more info on Shards where they need it, so they don't have to navigate away to check their Shard counts.

Gear Details

When a player views possible rewards or shipments, gear that is currently needed for a character(s) is badged.

Clicking on a badged piece of gear will display all characters that currently need the gear (at that moment).

Viewing gear details now displays the quantity of gear that the player owns.

Finding Gear/Shards

Improvements were made to the Find flow so players will know if they got the piece they were looking for.

After pressing "Find" to search for a piece of gear, when that piece of gear is part of the post-Battle rewards, it is highlighted as "Collected X/Y" with X being the quantity of the item the player owns and Y being the quantity of the item needed to fulfill the crafting requirement.

Shards will also be highlighted as "Collected X/Y" when searched.

Shard Shop

Previously when players gained enough Shards for a 7 star character, any additional Shards earned had no value. The Shard Shop is the answer to this problem.

A "Shard Shop" will now unlock when a player has collected a 7 star character.

At the shop, players can convert additional Shards earned for their 7 star characters into a currency that can be spent on acquiring Shards for other characters.

Dialog for pre and post unlock guide explain the purpose of the shop.

Gear Crafting Improvements

Several changes were made to the crafting flows to make it less labor intensive for players.

Previously when crafting a piece of nested gear (multiple levels of crafting), after crafting was complete for the "child" or "component" piece, the player would have to navigate up a hierarchy level to determine what gear was needed next to craft the "parent" or "full" piece.

Now when the child item has been crafted the player will immediately be taken to the parent (one level up), removing the extra navigation step.

Previously when crafting a piece of nested gear with many levels of hierarchy, each child had to be crafted individually before the parent could be crafted. Crafting can now be done at the parent level if all gear and credits required for child items have been gathered.

A back button is now present in the gear crafting UI making navigation up a level of hierarchy more clear. The current hierarchy level is also highlighted.

The "Equip" button will now be green when the gear needed is available, minimizing players from accidentally spending crafting materials unnecessarily.

When multiple pieces of gear are needed, a scrollbar is present and gear that is needed is sorted to the top.

Arena Screen

Arena Matchmaking screen has been overhauled based on player feedback, and to clarify a number of things players were finding confusing.

The screen will now show opponents' full squad, allowing players to both plan for the Battle and to study what unit combinations other players are using.

Tap and Hold on opponent units will bring up details for that specific unit.

The player's own rank is more prominently displayed.

Changed the power icon to just the word "Power" to make it more clear to players.

The prize tier the player is currently is now displayed next to the player's power.

A timer was added to the Prizes button to show when those rewards will be distributed.

The Home button is now available in the upper right. The Refresh opponent list button has been moved.

Shipments button in Arena (and Galactic War) changed to read "Redeem" and show the currency icon to clarify where to spend the related currency.

Improvements to Delayed Damage

Previously, abilities which caused Damage over Time (DoT) or had a time-delay element in their damage could not kill an enemy unit when it started its turn. That is no longer the case.

Units with a DoT, bomb, or similar effect on them will suffer the correct amount of damage at the very start of their turn. If that takes them to zero health, they will die before taking their turn.

Improved Pack Descriptions

The pack description screen has been improved to provide a more detailed account of the potential drops from each of the packs.

This is meant to more accurately represent the possible drops from packs than the previous approach that only displayed characters.

This new description is not a comprehensive list of everything in the pack, due to the vast quantity of items, but shows a large percentage of the possible items.

Ally Information

Clicking on an Ally under Allies->Manage will now display additional information about the Ally including the leader's ability, PvP Rank, and Power.

This will allow players to assess their ally list more carefully.

Sell button / screen removed

We removed the Sell Screen, and ability to sell items, from the game. This decision was made for a few reasons.

First, the replacement of Mining Droids with credits removed the item that people sold the most.

Second, with the improvements to gear details, players can now see how many of an item exists in inventory, a primary value of the Sell screen.

Finally, we were noticing that players were often accidentally selling items, leading to a negative experience.

We realize some players sell gear and xp bots purposefully to earn credits, but we feel this is a better experience for the majority of the playerbase.

Any player that had a mining droid in the inventory will receive an Inbox message granting the credit value of the droids.

Gear rarity visibility

The border around gear denoting its rarity is now present in Shipments and during Data Card opening, making it easier to know the gear's value.

Squad management

When selecting squad members pre-Battle, the characters previously had their level listed redundantly. This has been replaced by showing character power, assisting in determining which character to choose.

Character Inventory Screen

Previously, on the Characters inventory screen, each panel for a character had a progress bar with two potential meanings. If the character had been Activated, the bar indicated the units XP progress to their next level. If the character had not been Activated, it showed progress of collecting Shards to Activate the character. This was confusing and hard to message clearly.

Now, regardless of whether the character is or isn't Activated, the bar under the characters now shows progress to the next star level (unit Shards).

Characters were previously sorted by level as a default. They are now sorted by Power, which is a more accurate representation of their value.

Gear slots now show the actual gear images so it's more clear when the slots are filled. Optimizations to the system allowed this without massive increase to inventory load.

Galactic War

The chest that animates, prompting the player to open it, has improved VFX so it's easier to tell what to do (tap on chest to open it).

Refreshing the Galactic War Shipments now costs premium currency to make it consistent with other shipment stores.

Daily Reward

Improved VFX after collecting the Daily Reward will more clearly show what the player has received.

A detail was added to the info section in the Daily Reward screen explaining that daily login progress resets at the beginning of each month.

Accounts

If a player on Android is logged into G+, that player will continue to be logged in after doing an update from the app store. Previously a player could be logged out of G+.

Battle Targeting

The targeting reticle "pops" more noticeably when attempting to target an opponent unit when another opponent unit is taunting, or when trying to target a stealthed opponent.

This should make it more clear why a player cannot change targets in those instances.

Improvements were made in Battle to make it easier to target backrow opponents so players can be more strategic in their target choices.

Targets will no longer swap between character turns when using manual Battle.

Training Bot Icons

The size of training droid icons was increased in the info panels to make them easier for players to see and differentiate between them.

VFX Changes

Double Shot VFX for Cad Bane and CT555's basic attack has been improved so they shoot from the right gun for the double shot.

VFX for Clone Wars Chewbacca's specials were differentiated more so it is clear that the chosen special ability was triggered.

Attack animation distance

The distance to target in the animation for the Jedi Knight Guardian's basic attack and Kylo Ren's second special was reduced (no functional change, cosmetic adjustment) so it looks more like they are hitting their targets.

Challenges

In order to help players plan, all of the panels for the Challenges now show the days of the week when a Challenge is available.

Previously, inactive Challenges were hidden, but in order to show when inactive Challenges will become available, all panels are now visible even if they are not accessible.

“Go” Button Fixes

The “Go” button for Daily Activities has now been fixed for the Galactic War Activity, Use the Force, Mission Directives, Hard Won, and Give in to the Dark Side.

Go button on the "Battle Hardened" Achievement now takes player to Hard Mode Campaign instead of the store.

App Rating Prompt

Added to the choices so players can dismiss the prompt forever or postpone it for a while.

"Rate Now" - Takes player to app store.

"Not Now" - Player is reminded to rate later.

"Never" - Reminder does not reappear.

Home Screen Scroll Bar

Added an indicator to the Cantina Home Screen under the HUD that shows that there are scrollable areas to the left and right

Replies

FOTP was affected by a couple bugs that significantly affected his performance in a variety of ways. Considering the magnitude of these fixes, we're going to observe how much they affect him before considering any further balance adjustments.

Fixed a bug with FOTP's 7-Star stat allocation, giving him much higher Strength Growth and much lower Agility Growth than intended.

Fixed a bug that allowed his Basic ability to gain more multi-attacks than intended

Talia
As one of the few Dark Side healers, Talia finds her way into a variety of parties, but has been significantly underperforming; we feel this is largely due to the extreme risk of her powerful heal, coupled with a few AI bugs that tend to drive her to make... tactically unsound decisions.

Health Steal effect on Basic ability doubled at all ranks (60~100%, from 30~50%)

Fixed multiple bugs that made AI-Talia use her heal improperly

Poe Dameron
Poe's high-Tenacity gear upgrades after the level cap increase, coupled with his Unique ability, allowed him to substantially outperform other Tanks. In addition, the high chance to Expose enemies with Resistance Bravado made it reliable for him to secure a huge advantage for his team on the first turn. After these changes, Poe still has far more Tenacity than any other unit, and still has the only currently available Area-of-Effect Expose ability, even if it is less reliable, so we are confident that his unique role as a high-risk, high-reward Tank remains intact.
As an additional note: the changes to his gear requirements were made only on Tiers II and III in order to minimize the disruption to players currently trying to equip and upgrade Poe.

Expose chance reduced by 15% at all ranks

Reduced Tenacity on Unique ability from 15-35% to 10-22%

Reduced Tenacity on gear at early Tiers

Jedi Knight Guardian
Many players collect Jedi Knight Guardian early on to round out their parties, but she's also quickly outclassed by many other Tank options. These updates should help to keep her competitive.

Defense bonus on Unique ability replaced with Heal Over Time (5~15% Max Health per turn)

Asajj Ventress
This update should serve to fix several of the factors (including a bug) that made Asajj's Strike Fear ability frequently unreliable or ineffective. Note that there is still a bug under investigation that can cause Dispel effects to fail to remove enemy buffs.

Fixed a bug that caused Asajj's Strike Fear ability to heal all allies instead of just Asajj

Healing effect altered to be 20~40% Max Health plus 3~9% per effect dispelled, from 3~7% per effect only

Ability now Dispels all buffs at all ranks

Savage Oppress
Savage was intended to be an extremely durable Attacker who could become a huge threat when he found the opportunity to finish off a low-Health enemy, but his less-than-stellar base damage and relatively unreliable Special ability made that difficult. This update should make Savage a much more threatening foe on both accounts.

Unique ability now also grants Offense Up for 1 turn when receiving damage.

Special ability now deals massive damage and can't be Evaded when used against enemies at 25% Health or less

Mace Windu
Mace Windu's kit was highly divergent, lacking synergy or focus that would allow him to play a clear role in combat. This overhaul should help him secure his identity as a heroic, high-pressure Tank that enemies will have to focus fire on to survive, even without a Taunt.

Basic ability reworked: Now deals 25~50% more damage while Mace is above 50% Health, and heals Mace for 50~70% of the damage dealt while Mace is below 50% Health

Unique ability reworked: At the start of each of his turns, Mace has a 30~60% chance to Expose a random enemy until the end of his turn. In addition, Mace gains 10~25% Turn Meter whenever he attacks an Exposed enemy.

Captain Phasma
Phasma's Leader ability had bugs that frequently allowed the bonus Assist attacks to trigger off of non-attack abilities, sometimes even targeting allies instead of enemies. It is unknown to what degree this influenced Phasma's effectiveness, so we will observe the effects of this fix before considering any future balance adjustments.

Fixed a bug that allowed Phasma's Leader ability to trigger on non-attack abilities

Fixed a bug that could cause Phasma's Leader ability Assists to target allies instead of enemies

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue that prevented Minors with Google Play accounts from logging in to the game

Talia was using Water of Life as though it would heal her. AI was adjusted so she uses the ability more sensibly.

Fixed an issue where characters who were stunned showed no death animation when they were killed.

Fixed an issue where the portraits of enemies and rewards were getting stretched out, which made it difficult to determine what they were.

Fixed an issue where the Shipments button in Cantina Battles was displayed improperly as "Normal and Hard" after completing a Battle and prevented players from accessing the Cantina Battles store.

Fixed a bug with Health Steal gear items to ensure they were working properly and units were getting the full benefit.

Fixed an issue where the refresh button for the Galactic War shipments cost War Tokens instead of Crystals.

Fixed an issue where a Google Play login failure could occur after restarting the app. This lead players experiencing this bug that their progress had been lost.

Fixed an issue with the rewards screen after using a Sim ticket to do a Battle. Tapping on any item in the SIM ticket reward screen now will display details for each item type.

Fixed an issue where text for status description would occasionally go off screen when taunting enemy is near right edge of the screen.

Fixed an issue with the daily PvP Rewards which occasionally paid out more awards than it should have.

Fixed an issue where a bonus move is messaged when a unit doesn't perform bonus move.

Fixed an issue where the Android device back button has no functionality in the choose your name screen.

Fixed an AI issue where units were using abilities with "on defeat" effects on the wrong target.

Fixed an issue where a player is unable to change their target during combat (unrelated to Taunt).

Fixed a crash on Facebook Ally Invite.

Fixed a UI issue where PVE Energy icon is shown in a Cantina Battle mission panel when using the Find function.

Fixed an issue in Squad Arena where Gear Level indicators on opponents were obscured.

Fixed an issue where the animation showing conversion of a duplicate character into Shards was inconsistent when a duplicate character was pulled from a pack. This was leading some players to believe the incorrect number of Shards had been awarded, which was not the case.

Fixed an issue where "Light Side Battles" text was flickering when swiping through the Home Screen.

Fixed an issue where tapping to change the sorting of the Inbox caused rewards in the selected message to flicker.

Fixed an issue where the application could remain in a progression block after opening the first data card in FTUE.

Fixed an issue where the player could access the drop related details before items/Shards were received when purchasing single data cards.

Fixed an issue where Premium Currency did not appear in the Possible Rewards section of the Challenges.

Fixed an issue where a badge persisted over Character Inventory even when player could not upgrade or equip anything.

Fixed an issue where on a fresh install of the app the Dark Side table button would replay the unlock animation on first load of cantina.

Fixed an issue where the game UI flickered after dismissing "Insufficient Storage" prompt.

The potency and tenacity upgrade descriptions where modified to display as a percentage.

Fixed a purchase issue where the catalog was failing when a purchase was attempted, thus making it impossible to finish the transaction.

Fixed an issue where the Challenge Feature Intro displayed on unlocking the Cantina Battles.

Fixed a display issue when switching tabs in the help menu while overscrolling.

Fixed an issue in the tutorial where the Select Battle button was greyed out.

Fixed an issue where the promotion tutorial arrow was still present after switching between characters.

Fixed a tutorial progression block when tapping rapidly on units.

Fixed an issue where word wrapping was occurring mid-word in some non-English languages.

Fixed an issue with legibility on stats increase pop-up from equipment slots in Character Details.

Fixed an issue where if the Shipments button was tapped twice, the Shipments pop-up could not be dismissed on certain iOS devices.

Fixed an issue where the application froze for 5-10 seconds upon tapping on a leveled ability.

Fixed an issue where when a duplicate character was pulled from a pack, the animation showed the already owned character, not the character pulled from the pack. For example, if the player owns a Snowtrooper unit that they've built up to 6 stars and pulls a duplicate, 3 star Snowtrooper from the Bronzium pack, the unit shown in the conversion animation would be a 6 star Snowtrooper, not the 3 star Snowtrooper.

Fixed an issue with graphical abnormalities on the Home Screen on certain devices.

Fixed an issue where the description text for War Token and Sim Ticket currencies was inaccurate.

Fixed an issue where War Tokens sometimes displayed incorrectly in the reward screens.

Fixed an issue that made the unit's shadows display very elongated on Tatooine environment.

Fixed a bug where the Bespin Hallway Camera clips through environment geometry on initial load of level.

Fixed a model issue where the Mob Enforcer's head was missing in the character detail screen. Head has been replaced on shoulders.

Jedi Councilroom sky was a black abyss showing naught but the passing vehicles. It now shows more than that so as not to remind players of the void.

Fixed a bug where a graphics box would appear behind units during activation.

Fixed an issue in the intro cinematic where Luke's lightsaber showed up behind the cantina keeper.

Optimizing the icons for combat effects in battle so loads are less taxing on devices and cause less slowdowns.

Fixed a texture issue on the Galaxy Tab 3. They were distorted on this device.

There was an issue with the Transaction Recovery Message details pane in the Inbox message of the same name. Details now appear so players will know when a transaction has been recovered.

The Achievement award for reaching Player Level 10 Rewards was erroneously set at 100k Credits instead of 50k. It has been re-set to 50K Credits.

Fixed an issue where debuffs and buffs on units with auto-revive capabilities were retained after that unit was killed and revived.

Fixed the Teebo, Royal Guard, Kit Fisto, and Nute Gunray ability effects and an enemy Jedi Knight Guardian debuff that persisted when the Battle proceeded to the next encounter.

Fixed an issue where Leia's Unique ability had a 100% chance to give the Critical Chance Up buff. It shouldn’t have been 100% and was adjusted.

Fixed an issue where enemy units are resisting Darth Vader's Leader ability. No effect was granted to the enemies but they shouldn't be effected at all by his leader ability.

We made a change to the Credit Mega-Pack to give players more opportunities for bonuses. The Credit data card provides 65,625 Credits with a possible 2x or 3x bonus. Previously the Mega-Pack simply multiplied this number by 8, hence 525,000 credits, with a possible 2x or 3x bonus on the 525,000. We modified the Mega-Pack to open 8 credit packs with the opportunity for the 2x or 3x bonus on each of them. This results in more opportunities for a bonus on top of the guaranteed 525,000 credits.

Closed a PvP rank exploit that took a lot of coordination between two players but was a loophole that needed to be closed.

Fixed an issue where manual targeting could affect the randomness in an encounter.

Fixed an issue in the Find flow. When searching for an item that drops in a Challenge using the Find flow it would bring players to the view of all Challenges rather than the specific challenge needed. Now players will be brought to the specific Challenge needed.

Fixed an issue that when navigating to the Shipments section in a new game, the Crystal section briefly interferes with the Shipments graphics.

Moved the General Veers unit model in his Unit Details screen so his head wasn't so high on the screen.

Replaced a corrupt image that would appear when tapping on the Arena Tokens icon in an Inbox message.

Fixed an issue where background music was unable to be turned back on after having been turned off.

Fixed a small issue where the area where the Bronzium Data Card Buy button appears would have functionality before the button graphic appears.

Fixed an issue in the initial tutorial where tapping a Training Droid icon wouldn't bring up its description box.

Increased the Shipments crate hit box on the cantina home screen to make it easier to tap.

Fixed an issue where clicking GO on the "Battle Hardened" Lifetime Achievement took players to the store. It now takes them to Battles.

Text change - Made the "or" text in the Dark Side Starter Pack text more obvious (e.g. "OR").

Text change - in the Agility Challenge: Details text it stated that support droids do not attack. They do. Text was changed to reflect their offensive nature.

Thank you. Looks like some impressively cool stuff.
But reducing Poe's tenacity really misses the point. You didn't change his speed, taunt or turn meter reduction, so he's still going to be on every high-end team. Disappointing.
Oh, and Asajj is now basically ruined.

I feel like Ventress got nerfed harder than Poe.
No party heal (arguably best part about her). And the base hp gain will be mitigated by the fact that her slow speed will allow enemies to get attacks in to render the heal moot. Dispel all buffs is good though.

Other than that small caveat, looks like a good update. I suppose a damage overhaul was too much to anticipate right now, but maybe in the future.

She did. It makes no sense. Even now I barely could justify using her because she usually dies to all the one-hitters before she even gets to move. And the nerf her.
There are barely any balance fixes here. It's still going to be PoeDPS everywhere. Sigh.